GRAHAM SUTHERLAND

The controversial portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, which Churchill himself hated because he said it 'makes me look half-witted' and which was destroyed (on the order of Mrs. Churchill) out of anger only a year or two after its completion, was commissioned in 1954 by past and present members of the House of Lords and House of Commons, and presented to the great statesman as a celebration of his eightieth birthday at a ceremony in Westminster Hall on November 30, 1954. Although Churchill would have preferred to have been painted in his robes as Knight of the Garter, the All-Party Committee has specified that he should be represented as the House of Commons had always known him, and the spotted bow-tie, black coat and waistcoat and striped trousers in which Sutherland painted him were indeed the dress familiar to every one of Churchill's parliamentary colleagues. At the first sitting Churchill asked Sutherland: 'How will you paint me, as a cherub or the bull dog?' 'He showed me a bulldog so I painted a bulldog.' Though the picture could never have been other than a portrait of an old man. . . Sutherland conveyed to the full the distinction and tenacity of the elder statesman. . . The pose is firm, the weight of the form massive, and Churchill's legs seem like mighty columns precisely because they have been truncated. 'The tyranny of the edge of the canvas, where to end the movement, is always a great problem with any kind of painting. . . Where to make the cut between the knee and the foot is not easy.'

An oil sketch shows Churchill in one of his characteristic moods, abstracted and brooding. After lunch one day he had agreed to be photographed by Felix Man, at the same time as he was dictating letters to his secretary; he had gone over to the window and, as the sun was low, his skin seemed transparent, an effect sensitively portrayed by Sutherland

Graham Sutherland, by John Hayes, Phaidon Press, 1980

SEE:

• Graham Sutherland's Winston Churchill (1954)
  by Jonathan Jones  Guardian Unlimited, November 3, 2001
  
  
• Forerunner of lost Churchill portrait goes on show
  by John Ezard, Guardian, Thursday, July 1, 1999
  
  
• Sutherland to Beaverbrook about the Churchill Portrait
  
  

  '...The final form that the portrait took stemmed entirely from Churchill. He asked the first morning - "How will you paint me - as a cherub or the Bull Dog?" I replied "It entirely depends what you show me, sir". Consistently - except for the afternoon in which the foundations of the so-called "Hecht portrait" were laid (when he was in a sweet & melancholy reflective mood) he showed me the Bull Dog!! For better of [sic] for worse, I am the kind of painter who is governed entirely by what he sees. I am at the mercy of my sitter. What he feels or shows at the time I try to record. At this time there were unfortunate complications of a political nature. Repeatedly I was told "They (meaning his colleagues in the government) want me out" "But" (and this is a paraphrase of the actual conversation) "I'm a rock" and at that the face would set in lines & the hands clutch the arms of the chair. No one, I can say categorically, influences me in my renderings. The only danger to me sometimes is the charm of the sitter. Churchill often showed me the greatest charm & could not have been kinder. Non [sic] the less he was self concious [sic] & ill at ease during the actual times of sitting. I was seduced by his charm at other times & wanted so much to please him. But I draw what I see; & 90% of the time I was shown precisely what I recorded...I would not like to go down into the small history I may create as a person who deliberately or unconsciously malformed a face at the dictate of another...'

• An Extract from a Current Artists' Lives Recording:
  

  The painter and collagist, Elsbeth Juda, moved from Germany to London in 1933 with her husband Hans. . . they built up a distinguished collection of contemporary art and became close friends with many of the artists they collected. Elsbeth's two edited extracts from the NLSC recording recall how Sigmund Freud saved Elsbeth's life and how she and Hans were twice involved in almost saving Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston Churchill for posterity:
  
  "The Churchill portrait was for his eightieth birthday, and Sutherland was working away and showed Churchill only ever one oil sketch which was Churchill in his garter robes (which went straight to the Beaverbrook Museum in New Brunswick, Canada). And so Churchill obviously thought he was going to be painted in his garter robes [but] he wore his zoot suit for the sittings and never saw anything while Graham was working on the portrait, which made him a little irritable. And Sutherland had miserable sittings because Churchill had had a stroke and also drank heavily at lunch. Finally, during the session, Sutherland would say, 'A little more of the old lion, sir' and he'd sit up and then flop after a minute. And so Graham was desperate."
  
  "The week before it was finished, Graham said, 'Elsbeth, could you spare the time to come down to Westerham (where Churchill was living) and do a few photographs for me because he's simply folding up every time.' I was happy to do that. I went and took a whole set of photographs, which are now at the National Portrait Gallery, which are exactly like the portrait - the hand with the cigar, everything. And Churchill was enchanting, being photographed."
  
  "Anyway, the painting was done, and Graham took the risk-limiting step and asked Kenneth Clark, who was a great admirer of Sutherland, to look at the painting. K. Clark went to the White House with Lady Churchill and pronounced it a masterpiece, so all was set and fine. Well, [at the public unveiling] when Churchill pulled the velvet cord and saw himself in his zoot suit, slumped, with his feet cut off, he freaked out. He never referred to it again. And Graham rang up later that afternoon and said, 'Oh Hansie, I can't bear it. He's not having it. He doesn't want it. He hates it. What am I going to do? I can't afford to spend all�.' Hans said, 'Just calm down, Graham. Send it to us.' And so it was delivered and we had it in our studio living room and it looked very nice on an easel. And we photographed it. We were going to pay Sutherland the going rate."
  
  "Three days later, another phone call [from Sutherland]. 'I'm not allowed to give it to you, it's got to go back to Hyde Park Gardens [Churchill's London home]. So we delivered it back. And that's where she [Lady Churchill] burnt it. He was so distressed, having it in the house, so she took it down, chopped it up and put it in the boiler."
  
  "Anyway, twenty years later, fifteen years later, the Sunday Times rings. They said, 'Elsbeth, you've got these Churchill photographs, would you send them around, we'll send a messenger?' I said, 'Not so fast.' Because it was a privileged occasion, they belonged to Graham Sutherland as much as me. 'Have you asked Graham?' 'Oh, yes, we've asked him. He's at the Connaught.' So I rang the Connaught and Graham said, 'Yes, I'm here. I'd quite like to see them [the photos].' So I went over there and he said, 'Do you know they are terrific, because the Sunday Times has asked me to repaint the portrait for a huge fee. Can I keep these photographs?' And so he kept them. And he was going to do the portrait for the Sunday Times for some anniversary. But he didn't live long enough to do it. So that's the end of the Churchill portrait."

  Source: NLSC Newsletter